Ask the Irlbachers (Archive)
Martin Kreuzer, Operations Manager
The primary material of practically all optically transparent glass is silicon dioxide (SiO2) – quartz sand, like on white beaches. The finer and the purer, the better for glass production. The problem involved: Pure quartz sand has to be heated to over 2,000 °C in order to melt and be processed as quartz glass.
Fluxes lower the melting temperature
To lower this melting temperature significantly, so-called fluxes are added to the quartz sand. “Window glass”, the most common soda-lime glass in the world, consists of about 70% SiO2, plus about 15% sodium oxide (Na2O) and about 10% calcium oxide (CaO; unslaked lime). The remaining approx. 5% is made up of additives that are used to adjust certain properties of the glass, such as its colour. With around 1,100 °C, the processing temperature of soda-lime glass is almost 1,000 degrees below that of pure quartz glass.
Quartz gravel by the wayside
A real lot of work before the glassmakers can go to work
For glass production, the raw materials are mixed and heated in a refractory-lined tank. When the temperature is high enough, the mixture begins to melt. To drive out the gases generated by the melting process, the temperature is raised further (“refining”). This prevents the formation of glass defects due to air inclusions (bubbling). The melt is then allowed to cool down to its processing temperature (“stand-off”) – and the glassmakers or the machines for the production of flat glass go to work.
Flavio G.: „Why does glass break?“
Dr. Alexander Stoppa, Managing Engineer
„Glass is a very hard material. When subjected to pressure, it is more than twice as resistant as steel. The problem is tensile loads. At the bottom of micro-cracks, for example caused by mechanical damage to the surface, or structural defects in the glass, strong mechanical stresses arise. These then lead virtually instantaneously to breakage, which – as with other amorphous or brittle materials – hardly announces itself in advance. The technical strength of glass is therefore not an absolute value but is essentially determined by surface defects.
Regularly, we test our tempered safety glass
From glass bottles to tempered glass
Many types of glass can be protected by thermal toughening. The processes involved make glass significantly less sensitive, which is why one speaks colloquially of “hardened glass”, similar to steel. If thermally toughened glass breaks, it will break into small pieces without sharp edges – in contrast to, for example, uncured wine glasses or bottles.”
Would like to know how this is made? Just click here for more information!
Zdenek K.: „Frequently, I come across the term ‘glass frit’. What is that“
Dr. Alexander Stoppa, Managing Engineer
The base material for glass frit is finely ground glass, for example from cullet of our production. If you “cook” this glass powder at about 750 °C, it melts on the surface; the powder particles “bake” together. At this temperature, glass does not yet become molten; therefore, wine or window glass cannot be formed from the “baked” glass frit.
Materials engineers generally refer to such “baking processes” as “sintering”.
If the backed glass frit is quenched, the result is a porous material that is well suited as a filter in laboratory technology or the process industry. If this material is ground, we also refer to the resulting powder as glass frit.
Ceramic printing on one of our largest products
We have plenty of applications for glass frit
For Irlbacher, glass frit is important in two ways: as an essential ingredient in both the ceramic inks and the metal pastes we use to print electrical circuits on the glass. After all printing processes, we “bake” our blanks in the toughening furnaces. During this process, the glass frit fuses inseparably with the tempered safety glass. The inks, circuits and glass form a monolithic, substance-to-substance bonded composite.
